How to Bake a Book and Other Book Activities

We love reading books and we love, love, love doing learning activities after reading a book.  This post is going to be a running list of our favorite books and activities.  Check back soon as we will update often!  Also, check out Isabella's Book Bag for a list of our other favorite books.


How to Bake a Book

How to Bake a Book by Ella Burfoot is such an adorable book that teaches little ones about all the ingredients for making a story. Our 4 year old loves cooking so this book made a big impression on her. After reading the book a few times we "baked" up a few of our own stories by cutting pictures of characters, settings and actions from magazines. We then threw them all into a big bowl, gave them a good stir, added a few pinches of good and a few shakes of bad. Then we dumped it all out and rolled it all out to create one delicious story. Give it a try, you will be surprised at how much your little will get into it! 

Library Mouse: Home Sweet Home

The Library Mouse series by Daniel Kirk is a cute series about a book loving author mouse named Sam who lives in the library. Sam is temporarily displaced from his home while the library is being renovated. Home Sweet Home is about his adventures in researching and building temporary homes to live in. After reading the book, we tried our hand at building two of Sam's home considerations, an igloo and a castle. 

Chopsticks

We love this super cute book Chopsticks by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, published by Hyperion Books, so much that we were inspired to roll up some breakfast sushi and play a little hand eye-coordination game of chopsticks. Chopsticks is an amazingly fun book that teaches about standing on your own and sticking together. Our breakfast sushi is simply a whole wheat tortilla with peanut butter, mini chocolate chips, and dried cranberries. Let your little pick their own fillings. Roll tightly and cut like sushi. The fun part for our 4 year old was eating off of this cute Asian inspired plate with a side of strawberry jam dipping sauce and a pair of chopsticks. 

 Then she tried to test her hand eye coordination by picking up some pom poms. This activity is great for dexterity, hand dominance, pre- handwriting skills/ hand writing skills and fine motor skills. Try using smaller or larger pom poms or setting a time constraint depending on the age of your child.

There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

I don't know why, but reading There was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly by Simms Taback made us think of the game What's in Ned's Head!! 

Our 4 year old noticed that things the old woman swallowed got larger and larger. So we used the story to learn about sizes, big, bigger and biggest, small, smaller and smallest. We collected random things and put them in order by size and then she fed them to Ned's head. 

I was surprised at the challenge that it was for her. At lunch I caught her putting her carrots in size order from biggest to smallest and vice a versa. So I'd say that was a total win!! It turned out to be a great book and learning activity! 

And of course then we had to play many, many rounds of the actual Ned's Head game made by Ideal. It was a Family Fun's Toy of the Year winner. Swipe to the last 2 photos to see it. Players draw cards with a gross or creepy object and then have to feel for it through Ned's mouth or ears. It's perfect for 4-8 year olds!! Great sensory game!

If you like this activity, click here to see some of our other book activity ideas!